“I probably knew (Manuel) Piniero (also known as Barbaroja) better than any other American. I met him in the mountains of the Second Front where he was Raul Castro’s right-hand man. He was my escort officer—-escort meaning to keep an eye on me—but we never talked politics. It would have been inappropriate. I found him intelligent, with a sense of humor and a good conversationalist. I did not assess him to be a Communist but rather a half-baked revolutionary.”

Raul Castro, crackerjack CIA officer Robert D. Chapman’s close contact in Oriente, had a KGB handler (Nikolai Leonev) since 1954.

KGB protege Piniero, the key figure in creating Castro’s security apparatus, was already organizing the embryo of the G-2 (Castro’s military police) while he chummed around with the crackerjack Robert D. Chapman in Oriente’s Sierra Cristal.

And oh…the crackerjack former CIA sleuth Robert D. Chapman seems to believe that Barbaroja died in an auto accident, just as the Castro regime reported:

“Piniero was killed in a car crash in 1998. The foreign community in Havana knew that he often drove while drunk, and his death was attributed to a heavy foot on the accelerator.”

Chapman’s review lost me in the first paragraph with “bitter and angry tirade against the media and Hollywwood,” as if bitterness and anger couldn’t possibly be justified or deserved and automatically disqualified anyone who felt or expressed them–that is, of course, bullshit, but also convenient, expedient and an easy dodge (which isn’t so popular for nothing). When I saw that reading the full review would cost $39 (!), I figured this is Fantasyland for sure–and Chapman couldn’t even get a well-known name right: it’s Armando Valladares, not “Vallades.” Sheesh.